This section of 'How prepared are you for rehab at home?' is all about anaesthetic options that may affect your immediate mobility after surgery.
It may be assumed that you are happy to have pain-numbing blocks and infiltrations - and you may be - but ask your surgeon if you are likely to to be given these to help with pain after surgery. It is really helpful that you know exactly what the surgeon and anaesthetist plan to do in this respect, and exactly what it will mean for you in managing your pain after the op.
Going to hospital for knee surgery can be a difficult time in general, and of course you will have to cope also with a change in your mobility. Although your surgeon has probably explained the surgical procedure in some depth, you need to have a clear idea of how mobile you are going to be on your return and what kind of walking aids, shower aids and toilet aids you might need.
The tendency these days is for the hospital to send you home as quickly as possible, for both financial reasons and to minimise the potential for a hospital-acquired infection. Make a telephone appointment to ask your surgeon how many days you will be in hospital, supported by the staff there and on what day post-op you can expect to be sent home.
If you are going to be sent home within the first 24 hours, then the issue of whether or not any local anaesthetic block will still be working. Such a block will provide good pain relief for the first night, but then if you are sent home and the block wears off you may be plunged into acute pain without the support you had in hospital. Even if having a general anaesthetic and being put to sleep for the procedure, it often happens that the anaesthetist adds what is called a regional block while you are asleep, and possibly a long-acting local infiltration into the wound as well, so you may wake up comfortable but unaware that this is because of the local anaesthesia.